Where I write about running, marathons, Home Ownership, DIY projects, marriage, raising twins, growing up Polish and other Mysteries of Life

Friday, May 12, 2017

Being Her own worst enemy

My mom saves everything. From the sentimental to the stupid. She saves all her paperwork. When she pays a bill online, she actually prints the confirmation page out. I've tried showing her how to make a PDF of it and save it on the hard drive but I'd have better luck convincing a dog not to eat a sirloin steak.

So it is with great irony that we are looking for some specific documents and my mom cannot locate them in the piles of files she has at home. This is not the fault of her angry neighbor who allegedly called the inspectors on her; this is not her ex-boss who was an asshole for not paying her above market value for non-market value skillsets. This is her own doing.

And it is fucking frustrating because it falls on us. At the very least I have to hear her bitch about how tough her life is but am not allowed to recommend the obvious solutions that would improve things. At the more important level, we really could use those original documents that will likely show up once we give up and order expensive reprints.

Beyond that, some day the woman is going to die and it will be up to us to sort through that hellhole to find the few documents that could make our lives easier.

Let me paint a picture
to hopefully provide some background context. My mom has the mental and
emotional faculty of a teenager. Through an unfortunate set of
circumstances, she never developed the tools and savvy to navigate Life beyond this stage. In addition to that, she also has a closet full of Bad Decision Jeans
which she wears to death. I keep talking to her like she is an adult
capable of understanding complex scenarios and making mature, adult
decisions. Unfortunately, her brain is not wired correctly to process
these directives.